The character creation:
Introduction:
A character should always begin with an idea. One wants to play a certain type of person: a ghoul, that has been alive since before the Great War and is immensely well educated, since he spent 250 years learning, or a gunslinger going his own way, that only occasionally risks his hide for pay or a
Paladin, convinced of the Ideals of the Brotherhood of Steel.
Consider your character well and then choose numbers and values, that complete this picture, this idea you have.
Characters should be regarded as persons, not as an accumulation of numbers. But, this is a PnP and a number of numbers are linked to your character. The question at hand is, how exactly does one start with, this heap of numbers, to create a character.
Most importantly are the character stats, since they lay the grounds for the whole rest. Those are Strength, PErception, ENdurance, CHarisma, INtelligence, AGility, LUck, and COurage. In a human character those statistics can be filled with 45 points, with no stat having more than ten
points or less than one. If you now have a calculator in your hand, you will notice that divided by 8, you get 5 and some change. That is correct. In principle you can start by assigning every stat five points (make them average) and you will then have five points left to assign as you see fit. If you
add those five points to, say, perception, your character will have the eyes of a falcon, the nose of a dog and the ears of an owl. If you want to add the strength of a bear, you could further remove one point of intelligence and four (one must remain, after all) from charisma and add those now free
points to strength, in which case the description with the “eyes of the falcon, nose of the dog and ears of an owl” probably becomes more than a compliment on their acuity.
| Strength: | 5 | 5 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perception: | 5 | 10 | 10 |
| Endurance: | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Charisma: | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Intelligence: | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Agility: | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Luck: | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Courage; | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| assignable points: | 5 | 0 | 0 |
For the illustration of this table:
On the left the unfinished character. In the middle
the example with one extreme stat and on the right
the example with two extremely good stats and one
extremely bad one.
The starting values of the skills are calculated based on the character stats and several tests will be
tested directly on the character stats. As a basic rule, higher is always better. BUT: whether or not
you actually need a lot of points in this or that character stat is debatable and depends highly on
your character.
A warrior, for example, profits of high values in the bodily stats, a doctor should be intelligent and
so on...
Following the distribution of the character stats, it is advisable to choose the traits. Characters do
not have to have traits – but it's advisable, if only out of role play reasons. Traits make him (or her)
special.
There are three types of traits:
positive,
negative and
neutral, as opposed to the Fallout computer
games where only neutral traits where available. In principle you can choose as many traits as you
wish. Positive and negative traits always come with a value. For example +3 for the positive trait
nocturnal or -5 for the negative trait agoraphobia. Neutral traits have no values, since they always
combine a perk with something negative and are therefore inherently balanced.
As my readers probably already assume: the traits need to be balanced!
If you give your character positive traits for +8 points he must receive the same points in negative
traits. In the end, it must come down to zero.
Now we have fully finished with the character stats (some traits can change character stats). With
that out of the way, you should now calculate the starting values of the skills. Be aware, some of
those will change as well.
To easier calculate the starting values of skills, I recommend using the character creation table.
Following that your character will receive extraordinary skills and a few skill bonuses by virtue of
his class. Now all that is missing are the tag
skills, the four skills that receive a further bonus of 15
skill points – and that develop twice as fast.
Details to all these steps can be found in the texts:
character stats and derived statistics, traits
and
classes. The way the character stats of the other playable races look can be found in the
race
rules.